Quality facilities for every school

Quality facilities for every school

Our public school buildings and facilities should be among the best in the world and this means keeping up with school maintenance every year.

All our children, teachers and education staff deserve to learn and teach in the high quality facilities.

There has been a backlog of school maintenance for many years over successive governments.

In 2013, the Victorian Auditor General found that buildings in 30% of schools were at the point of imminent failure, or have already failed and 3,000+ buildings were below the ‘standard’ that the Education Department requires for all school buildings. The Government has not yet fixed this backlog.

The Greens will:

Fix the outstanding school maintenance backlog within two years.

Ensure five year asset management plans are implemented with the industry standards of a minimum 2% of the asset replacement value (ARV) is spent per annum on maintenance across Victoria’s government schools.

It is not acceptable to expect our public school students, teachers and other staff to learn and work in sub-standard facilities. Our government schools are valuable public assets that shouldn’t be allowed to deteriorate due to lack of regular maintenance.

Under the Greens' plan future governments can avoid ever getting into another school maintenance backlog situation, by ensuring that a guaranteed level of funding is allocated for school maintenance every year, so that routine maintenance occurs regularly and as needed.

We respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners of this country as the first inhabitants, and the custodians of the lands where we live and work. We pay tribute to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and give respect to Elders past, present and emerging.